Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor at Newsweek, says "Poor Economics" moves "beyond all the bluster of development theories crafted in fancy rooms and actually examines at close range the rational economic decisions made by folks living on less than one dollar each day."

James Pressley of Bloomberg calls Poor Economics "an enlightening look at what randomized control trials, such as those used to assess new medicines, tell us about the behavior of impoverished people -- and how to help them."